


this friday night resembles you

by saddermachine



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cats, Convenience Store, Crack Disguised as an Actual Fic, Falling In Love, M/M, Magical Realism, Minor Blood and Gore, Shoplifters Will Be Killed And Eaten
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 23:32:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15873954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saddermachine/pseuds/saddermachine
Summary: donghyuck and jeno find love in a convenience store.





	this friday night resembles you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jelly_spine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jelly_spine/gifts).



The _Millenium Convenience Store_ is a 24 Hour convenience store chain that was created for the convenience and benefit of the general and less general public.

Stores can usually be found in the in-between places and streets where the general and less so mingle. Night and day and other, similarly dramatic, things.

 

***

 

There are some things, Donghyuck thinks as he dumps his bicycle in a nearby hedge, that he likes about his job.

His job being the much sought after graveyard shift at the most local _Millenium Convenience Store_.

He likes the hours because they give him an excuse to act like he's hard-done-by. He likes the hardboiled sweets they keep under the counter and the beaded curtain that separates the store from the staff room, which is about the size of a postage stamp. It also houses Donghyuck's other favourite thing: the coffee machine.

It's a crappy, older-than-your-grandmother sort of thing, that spits out coffee the color and consistency of hot tar.

Donghyuck didn't like coffee when he first started working there, but it's his God now and he's come to terms with it.

One of his ex-co-workers had once said, "The more you drink of this stuff the likelier you'll die before you reach thirty." He then proceeded to chug a whole styrofoam cup's worth in one go and told a skittish-looking customer that God is dead.

He died three weeks later in a tragic car accident that had little to do with the convenience store coffee since he was on LSD at the time.

 

Three other things Donghyuck likes about his job are his three, current and probably alive, co-workers.

There's Huang Renjun who has worked at every other _Millenium Convenience Store_ in existence and wears a name tag that says, " _Destroyer of Worlds_ " which is nice. Donghyuck was terrified of him for exactly two and a half hours before Donghyuck accidentally called a rude customer a name that even demons have difficulty pronouncing and friendship was born out of the customer's anguished shouts.

Na Jaemin had been the New One before Donghyuck arrived so when Donghyuck started his first shift he was treated to the 5-star experience of watching Jaemin swing between the two most prominent versions of himself; the Extreme Coddler and Arrogant Frat Boy That Needs To Get Decked Into The Sun.

If Donghyuck were a worse person than he actually is he would have a list ranking his three co-workers by tolerableness.

Admittedly he does have a list like that, but it's not actually written down so he's still not that dickhead who makes lists about people.

Huang Renjun is the most tolerable out of all them, including Donghyuck himself. Being tolerable, easy to get along with and vaguely terrifying are the three main points Donghyuck has under Renjun's name.

Lee Jeno comes second, mostly because he's nice to look at and also because he makes the most effort, out of all of them, to be actually likable and being likable between the hours of 10 PM and 6 AM are not features many human beings possess. He's way ahead Jaemin, but a tad under Renjun because of a thing that Jaemin likes to refer to as Jeno's furry little problem.

Third and last on the list is Jaemin, where he has been since the beginning and will remain till the end of time.

They also have a store manager. For some reason.

His name is Y. Nakamoto and that's all he ever tells them.

Y. Nakamoto spends most of his time, either in the storage rooms under the store, in the staff room-slash-closet or occupying the spaces between life and death.

He’s as nice as store managers get.

 

When Donghyuck enters the store he finds Jeno sprawled out in aisle three, limbs twisted grotesquely with only the whites of his eyes showing. Renjun's clambering around his prone body, a box of cheap blackboard chalks open by Jeno's ankles.

"Should I ask?"

Renjun, currently tracing the outline of Jeno's head barely looks up.

"Do you want to know?" Jaemin asks, elbows propped up on the counter. There's a rather gory gardening magazine spread out in front of him.

Jeno's still doing a very good impression of being dead.

"Renjun?" Donghyuck asks. "Do I want to know?"

The hum of the refrigerators fills up the gap, the scrape of Renjun's chalk had left. He peers up at Donghyuck like he's only just realized he's there.

"You're late," he says.

The minute hand on the clock that hangs above the counter tick tocks its agreement. Donghyuck ignores them both.

"Has anyone" – Donghyuck waves a hand vaguely at Jeno's random arrangement of limbs – "like, seen this?"

A rustle of sticky magazine pages and Jaemin says, "Not really. Nakamoto has, but he's downstairs and when he asked Renjun –"

"I said it's a science project."

"You're not in school anymore," Donghyuck points out.

Renjun, who had resumed his sketching of Jeno's left elbow, pauses. "I don't think Nakamoto knows what science is, Donghyuck. So I don't think it matters to him if I'm still in school or not."

"Wait – wait. What did he think you were doing?"

"Some satanic ritual, probably."

"Easy mistake, really," Jaemin says, disinterestedly.

There's a rather stunned pause and Jeno conveniently fills the silence by coming back from the dead. "Can you hurry? My shoulder's cramping up and the floor's kind of cold."

Renjun shushes him with a flap of a chalk-covered hand. "Patience. You have to look realistic or I can't focus."

"Can I at least close my eyes properly?"

"No, no! The eye thing is better."

"I'm getting a headache," Jeno complains, threating to sit up.

"There's aspirin in the break room," Renjun argues, pushing him back down hard enough to have the back of his head collide with the tiles with a dull thud. Everyone except Renjun winces.

"That's not aspirin," Donghyuck and Jaemin say in unison and the overhead lights flicker as if they’re laughing.

 

***

 

One night, at exactly 3:34 AM Donghyuck walks into the staff bathroom only to find their store manager dangling halfway out of an air vent.

There's a very long and very uncomfortable pause.

"I can just – go," Donghyuck says, already backing out into the narrow hallway.

Y. Nakamoto nods, tucking a stray strand of badly bleached hair behind his ear. "That would be nice, yeah."

 

"Everything okay?" Renjun asks as Donghyuck marches right past the counter and towards the exit.

"I wanted to use the bathroom but Nakamoto's nesting in an air vent so I'm gonna walk three blocks and blackmail the TY branch into letting me use their bathroom."

"Sounds reasonable."

He's reading the _Reasonable Punishments for the Unreasonable Spirit_ over Jaemin's shoulder and Donghyuck really wants to reiterate the point that their store manager is currently creeping around in their air vents.

"Can I come with you?" Jeno asks, fading through the bead curtain like one of the spirits the other two are reading about.

"Do you like walking?"

Jeno stares at him. "What kind of question is that?"

"A rhetorical one, c'mon."

 

***

 

"Employees please, look here. I'm about to make you all _rich_."

The customer in question dumps a basket worth of beer, Haribo and Red Bull on the counter and grins, obviously quite proud of himself.

"Do you need a bag with this?" Jaemin asks, ignoring the customer’s remark and picking up a packet of liquorice Haribo between his thumb and forefinger.

The customer – a young man who looks like he hangs out with people bound to die before they reach 25 – stares at him, clearly offended. "Do you see how much I'm buying?"

Jaemin puts down the Haribo packet and fixes the customer with a look that could make mountains tremble. "Sir," he says with great effort, "it doesn't matter how much you pay. My wages will stay the same."

Donghyuck, who had been wiping the floor in aisle four, pauses to swipe at Jeno with his mop. "Five dollars says he's gonna curse that man's beer."

Eyes twinkling Jeno reaches out a hand and they shake on it. "Deal," he grins, fingers lingering briefly on Donghyuck's palm.

The lights spark and flare in tune with Donghyuck's pulse.

 

***

 

It was around three weeks into Donghyuck's new job that he realized that what he had assumed was just high tolerance for Lee Jeno was actually a crush of the highest degree. Like, a stage four crush. Return of sanity: unlikely.

That kind of crush.

He realized what had happened when they were huddled in the break room, making donuts that they could put in the display cases once 4 AM rolled around and Jeno was rambling about a grey, long-haired cat he found on his way home yesterday and there were smudges of powdered sugar on his lips and cheeks and Donghyuck realized, with a painful twist of his heart, that he wanted to _kiss_ Lee Jeno.

 

Which leads to now, same place, different time.

The fluorescent lights on the ceiling make the room hum with a greenish kind of glow. That and the sweetly artificial smell of the powdered sugar makes Donghyuck's temples throb. Fatigue crawling up his spine like a virus.

Jeno's seemingly endless, cheerful chatter still manages to worm a way through the fog in his brain and Donghyuck sifts sugar all over a pile of leaflets for an Indian restaurant, too busy watching Jeno's mouth move to pay attention to what he's doing.

"You know," Jeno says after a very brief pause, "if I could, I would adopt every stray cat in the world."

Donghyuck doesn't doubt it. He says so and Jeno grins, absentmindedly licking some stray sugar off his knuckles and wrist.

There is no thought process that could possibly lead to or explain the thing Donghyuck does next, so, in hindsight, he blames it on the weird lighting, the night shift, and a general idea that we are all mere pawns of fate.

He lunges forward and presses a sloppy, open-mouthed kiss against Jeno's lips.

They stay suspended in time for exactly two-and-a-half seconds before a kitchen timer brings them back to reality.

Under the smudges of white powdered sugar, Jeno's face has turned a shade an eyeshadow palette would probably describe as _bubblegum pink_. Not to be outdone, a similar shade crawls up the back of Donghyuck's neck as they stare at each other.

The taste of sugar and Red Bull sticks to the back of Donghyuck's teeth and tongue for another week.

 

***

 

One moonlit night a tall, gangly man stumbles into the store. He's as pale as a sheet and being supported by what they all assume is a friend.

"I need to break a curse," the friend says, sounding calmer than what is generally acceptable when the person you're supporting his bleeding all over the floor.

Oh, yeah. The tall man is bleeding out of his nose and mouth. Like, a lot. Lots and lots of blood. More than seems plausible.

"Aisle five," Donghyuck says and they watch sadly as the man continues to bleed all over the store.

 

He and Jeno spend the rest of the night scrubbing the tiled floor while Jaemin and Renjun man the till.

Donghyuck slips and almost breaks his neck exactly seven times when he finds Jeno staring at him like he's looking into a crystal ball.

 

They're both working on a particularly stubborn dried puddle of blood when Jeno suddenly asks, "You're not allergic to cats are you?"

Donghyuck blinks at him. "I don't think so. Why?"

Flushing the same color as the blood diluted dishwater in the bucket beside them Jeno says, "Well, I thought – I wanted to ask if you maybe wanted to go see a movie with me."

By the counter, Jaemin and Renjun's conversation comes to a very abrupt halt.

"At six in the morning?" Donghyuck asks before he can help himself.

"A cinema a couple of blocks away has breakfast deals now."

The shop door swishes open quietly and a cool night breeze and three hooded figures float inside.

"What _kind_ of breakfast?" Donghyuck asks, unperturbed.

Jeno's expression lights up as he replies, "Oh, _all kinds_."

That pretty much seals the deal and Donghyuck asks, "What movie?"

"Well, I –" Jeno starts but Renjun's voice cuts through the air between them like butcher's knife.

"Clean-up crew, someone's bleeding aisle five!"

 

***

 

The movie date is a success in every way.

Donghyuck gets a kiss that tastes like buttery popcorn and Nutella and he gets to doze off on Jeno's shoulder on the bus ride home.

 

***

 

"You're gonna have to repeat that, sir," Donghyuck says slowly, hands raised appeasingly. "In a language that I can understand."

The customer he's currently trying to coax into being coherent is tall, handsome and absolutely terrified.

"Promise you won't tell anyone?"

Donghyuck stares at him for a good minute or so before saying, "Sir, I'm a night shift convenience store employee, I don't care what fucked up curse you may or may not have put on a donut or if you can't get it up. Really. I don't care."

Not entirely reassured the man looks over his shoulder before bracing his hands on the counter and leaning all the way into Donghyuck's personal space. "I need to reverse a spell," he whispers, voice hoarse and carrying. Donghyuck can hear the other three listening from behind the bead curtain.

"What kind of spell, sir."

Another nervous glance and then, "I accidentally turned my girlfriend into a cat."

 

***

 

"Guys. Guys. _Guys_ , look."

Renjun, currently standing on the counter with a rolled up magazine in one hand and a half-eaten sandwich in the other, freezes. Jaemin's standing next to him, arms nervously outstretched in case Renjun's sense of balance suddenly and miraculously disappears. The bead curtain clangs noisily as Donghyuck materializes.

"That," Jaemin says, slowly, "is a dead cat."

Jeno holds it up for them to see better and they all grown in unison, shifting back a full step or two which almost kills Renjun.

"She's not dead, though!" Jeno says, sounding delighted.

"Looks pretty dead from here."

"Wait" – Donghyuck takes a hesitating step forward – " _she_?"

Jeno beams, arms still full of half-dead cat. "It's the girlfriend!"

That catches the attention of the other two and Jaemin braves another glance before gagging and facing the wall. "And why," he says, haltingly, "does she look like that? Did her boyfriend try and kill her?"

Jeno's face falls, almost comically and Donghyuck isn't sure if he should comfort him or suppress a laugh. "Ah. Yeah. About that."

There's a pause and then he calls, "Uhm, Mr. Nakamoto could you come in here for a second?"

The shop door swishes open to reveal a decidedly bloody and guilty store manager Y. Nakamoto.

They stare.

It's Jaemin of all people who manages to get a grip first. "Sir. With, like, all due respect and all that, but did you try and _eat_ that cat?"

"Uhm – by accident, maybe?"

Donghyuck rouses himself. "How do you maul a cat by accident? Sir."

"Especially a cat that's actually an enchanted human," Renjun adds, the only one out of the other three starin their bloodstained store manager right in the face.

Y. Nakamoto throws his hands up defensively. They too are covered in drying blood and cat hair. "I didn't _know_ the cat was a human once."

Renjun rounds on Jeno, still cradling the cat and dripping blood all over his shoes. "And _you_ can tell it's the girlfriend cat?"

Jeno actually has the nerve to look offended and he says, voice pitched in a hurt sort of way, "Of course I can."

"Can I go now?" Y. Nakamoto says, obviously not having been paying attention.

"You're the store manager," Renjun and Donghyuck chorus.

Two conversations start to run parallel as Jaemin points an accusing finger at Jeno and says, "You are really fucking _weird_ , do you know that?"

 

The night ends with them resurrecting the cat in the break room while Y. Nakamoto stands guard at the counter with blood and cat guts under his fingernails.

 

***

 

There are two signs glued next to the sliding doors of this particular branch of _Millenium Convenience Store_.

One says: _Shoplifters Will Be Killed And Eaten_.

The other: _No Pets Allowed_.

 

***

 

"You do know you're not allowed to bring animals inside right?" Jaemin says one balmy evening, watching with some disgust as Jeno helps his newly resurrected girlfriend-cat out of his bag. "Dead or alive," he adds as she coughs up a little bit of blood onto his textbook.

Jeno stuffs his bag under the counter and looks around. "Where does it say that?"

"By the entrance, moron."

Jeno stalks off, cat in his arms, to find the offending sign.

Moments later Donghyuck materializes out of thin air to cuff Jaemin around the back of the head. "Who are you calling a moron, huh?"

"Your – are you two dating?"

Donghyuck shrugs. "We've formed a bond only time can break."

The bead curtain clatters and Renjun sticks his head out of the break room. "You haven't _married_ , right?" He asks, sounding genuinely worried.

Donghyuck doesn't reply. Mostly to unnerve him.

Behind them, the store door slides open again and Jeno stomps back inside, bringing the scent of wet asphalt and air-fresheners with him.

"Hold this," he says, dumping the cat in Jaemin's hands, who promptly drops her, and goes off to find a pen.

He returns minutes later, black marker in hand, and disappears back outside.

After a moment's hesitation, they follow him outside, the resurrected cat weaving between their legs.

"Oh, that is anything but legal," Renjun says as they watch Jeno carefully write something in the gap between the already printed words.

They're all lit up like noir film characters, pale, sickly light from the store contrasting harshly with the general gloom of the parking lot and cloudy sky.

Finally, Jeno steps back to admire his handy work. His hands are stained black and the marker is dripping ink down the tips of his fingers and onto the pavement. Donghyuck reaches out to take the ink-stained hand, grinning as the ink hits the rough patches on his fingertips and seeps into his skin.

Over Jaemin's shoulder, he catches Renjun's eye who wiggles the ring finger on his left hand and sighs.

"No pets except Jeno's allowed," Jaemin read out loud, brow furrowing. He then turns to Jeno and says, "You can't do that, though."

Jeno shrugs. "We'll see how long it lasts."

 

***

 

It lasts three, cat-filled weeks before Y. Nakamoto walks into the store to find more cats there than employees and customers combined and makes Jeno walk the 9 blocks to have a new sign printed.

Girlfriend-cat is allowed to stay, coughing up blood on customers and chasing their store manager through air vents.

 

***

 

The sun is barely starting to rise when Jeno and Donghyuck wave goodbye to Renjun and Jaemin, who disappear down an empty street, shadows stretching more and more the closer they get to the sun.

Jeno and Donghyuck turn right, where they sit and wait for the 342 bus to take them home.

 

Small change jangles in Donghyuck's pocket when they clamber onto the bus and one of Jeno's hands slips into Donghyuck's back pocket as they edge down the narrow aisle between the seats. The sun is definitely rising now, making Donghyuck feel like he's glowing from the inside out.  

They sit down at the back of the bus, Jeno taking the window seat which leaves Donghyuck to slump bonelessly against his shoulder. Their hands twist together like hundred-year-old vines.

"You know I'm in love with you, right?" Jeno asks suddenly over the rumble of the engine.

Donghyuck blinks up at him, eyelids heavy. "You're not as subtle as you might think."

"I don't think I was ever going for subtle," Jeno mutters, glancing outside.

"No?"

"Not consciously at least."

Donghyuck stretches and yawns. "Well, I love you too, if that means anything."

Nodding, Jeno says, "I stole waffles from the store."

A woman two rows in front of them turns to stare but they ignore her quite easily.

"Oh?" Donghyuck yawns again. "I got some maple syrup."

He can feel Jeno's mouth twist into a lazy grin. "Legally?"

"'course not," is the mumbled reply.

Jeno squeezes his hand. "So we're all set?"

The sun keeps eating away at the morning blue of the sky and Donghyuck replies, "Yeah. Yeah, we're all set."

 

**Author's Note:**

> you might think "what the fuck did i just read" after finishing this and that is absolutely justified 
> 
> i have no excuse, elsi ily
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/saddermachine)


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